His voice was unusually calm and contained. Dick had heard him use that tone but once before, when he made a proposition to a man in an Arizona camp that the road was wide, the day fine, and each well armed. He had helped bury the 186 other man after that meeting, so now read the danger note.
“I’ll go get The Lily to come up and open the door,” one of Bells’ supporters said; “and won’t you go for Doc?” He addressed the man on the other side of the engineer.
“Sure!” replied the other.
Within five minutes they were in Mrs. Meredith’s rooms again; and it seemed to Dick, as he looked around its dainty fittings, that it was forever to be a place of tragedy; for the memory of that terribly burned victim of the fire was still there, and he seemed to see her lying, scorched and unconscious, on the white counterpane.
“His nose is busted, I think,” his partner said to The Lily, whose only comment was an abrupt exclamation: “What a shame! The cowards!”
He turned to the woman with his set face, and, still speaking in that calm, deadly voice, said: “Do you happen to have your gun up here?”
Her eyes opened wider, and Dick was about to interpose, when she answered understandingly: “Yes; but I’ll not give it to you, Bill Mathews.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, as quietly as if his request or her refusal had been mere desultory 187 conversation. “I might need one in a pinch; but if you can’t spare it, I reckon the boy and me can do what we have to do without one.”
He turned and walked from the room and Dick followed, hoping to argue him from that dangerous mood.
“Say, Bill,” he said, “isn’t it about bad enough without any more trouble?”